Dealing w/ Agents: Learning experiences....

[Jim]

I'm starting a new thread and moving a few stories from other topics in here.

Tell us what you've learned from dealing with various agencies... good, bad, horror stories, etc.

[BFlat]

Well, here I got a little story that should reveal itself shocking to everyone. It might not be of any help telling, however I think it's an excellent example of the kind of stuff that's going on.

Besides playing music, I also run with my husband this agency. We find gigs for other bands and ourselves as well. We had found a gig for a 10 piece DixieBand at a festival, we made an offer, the client accepted it, everything was going well. Until another agent, who's a competitor of ours, offered for the same gig 100$ less than we did. So far so good, that's part of the game, that's how this kind of business is done. The client is not crazy, we can't blame him for wanting to save money.

Here's the shocking part. Our offer was of 1700$ for 10 musicians, each of which we were gonna pay 150$ for the gig which was supposed to last about an hour. It's a fair price. Make the calculations yourself and see how much profit we're making as agents.

Now this competitor of our has offered 1600$ for the exact same thing. But the thing is that we discovered that this agent has hired some of OUR musicians to play this same gig we have offered them for 150$ each. After learning this, out of curiosity we asked our musicians how much they were offered?
--->75$<---
Again, make the calculations, 10 musicians at 75$ each, that makes 750$, the agent asked for 1600$, he's making 850$ of profit... more money than the 10 musicians earn together.

Not only I am pissed that some of our musicians are willing to be whores, but this agent is exploiting them, the client has no idea of what's going on, and who's loosing at the end of the line? The musicians who could have earned 150$ for the exact same gig instead of 75$. This sort of thing happens too often, if you ask me.

Imagine this, a 100$ difference is not very much. If a client is willing to pay 1600$ for a 10 piece band which is about the lowest price you can get that for in today's market, there is a sign here that tells me that any of you performers can actually not be afraid to ask for a decent pay of 100$ or even a little more. That's nothing for them festival organizers, they got budget, they make you believe by times that they don't have much budget, but that's not true. THEY GOT some budget. It's just that everybody is greedy in this business and that they'll try to get away with the most less expensive deal possible.

It's almost funny, all the musicians and artists that we find gigs for, have never complained that we are not paying them enough. Gee, no wonder why, they are willing to work for 75$. Moral of the story, by asking for a cheap price, sometimes you end-up loosing more than you think. Respect yourself dammit. And just by curiosity, those of you who have agents, try to find out how much cash your agents are making behind YOUR back. If you are making 75$ for a gig and that your agent is making 850$ of profit... there is something wrong, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.
And it means that you are worth more than 75$.

Think about this folks, and do yourself a favor, respect yourselves.